'Who's that talking now?' I asked.
'The Thriller delegate. She's arguing against Detective having a genre all of its own — at present Detective is under Crime, but if they break away the genres at Thriller will want to split themselves three ways into Adventure, Spy and Thriller.'
'Is it always this boring?' I asked, watching the Thriller delegate drone on.
'Always,' replied Havisham. 'We try to avoid any entanglements and let Text Grand Central take all the flak. Come on, you must sign the pledge.'
We left the viewing gallery and padded down the corridor to a door that led into the smallest room I had ever seen. It seemed to be mostly filing cabinet and desk. An equally small man was eating biscuits — and most of them were falling down his front.
'Thursday Next to take the pledge,' announced Miss Havisham. 'I have the documents all signed and sealed by the Bellman.'
'Work, work, work,' said the small man, taking a swig of tea and looking up at me with small yet oddly intense eyes. 'I rarely get any peace — you're the second pledge this year.'
He sighed and wiped his mouth on his tie.
'Who seconds the application?'
'Commander Bradshaw.'
'And who vouches for Miss Next?'
'I do.'
'Good. Repeat the oath of the BookWorld.' Primed by Miss Havisham, I repeated:
'I swear by the Great Panjandrum that I shall uphold the rules of Jurisfiction, protect the BookWorld and defend every fictioneer, no matter how poorly written, against oppression. I shall not shirk from my duty, nor use my knowledge or position for personal gain. Secrets entrusted to me by the Council of Genres or Text Grand Central must remain secret within the service, and I will do all I can to maintain the power of storytelling within the minds and hearts of the readers.'
'That'll do,' said the small man, taking another bite of his biscuit. 'Sign here, here and — er — here. And you have to witness it, Miss Havisham.'
I signed where he indicated in the large ledger, noting as I did so that the last Jurisfiction agent to have signed was Beatrice. He snapped the book shut after Miss Havisham had witnessed my signature.
'Good. Here's your badge.'
He handed over a shiny Jurisfiction badge with my name and number engraved below the colourful logo. It could get me into any book I wanted without question — even Poe if I so chose, although it wasn't recommended.
'Now if you'll excuse me,' said the bureaucrat, looking at his watch, 'I'm very busy. These forms have to be processed in under a month.'
We returned to the elevator and Miss Havisham pressed the twenty-sixth sub-basement button. We were going back into the Well.
'Good,' she said. 'Now that's out of the way we can get on. Perkins and Mathias we can safely say were murdered; Snell might as well have been. We are still waiting for Godot and someone tried to kill you with an exploding hat. As an apprentice you have limited powers; as a full member of Jurisfiction you can do a lot more. You must be on your guard!'
'But why?'
'Because I don't want you dead and if you know what's good for you, neither do you.'
'No, I mean why is someone trying to kill me?'
'I wish I knew.'
'Let's suppose,' I said, 'that Deane isn't just missing — that he may have been murdered. Is there a link between Perkins, Deane, Mathias and myself?'
'None that I can think of,' said Miss Havisham after a great deal of thought, 'but if we consider that Mathias may have been killed because he was a witness, and that one of your Outlander friends may be trying to kill you, then that narrows the list to Perkins and Deane. And there is a link between those two.'
'Yes?'
'Harris Tweed, myself, Perkins and Deane were all given an UltraWord™ book to test.'
'I didn't know that.'
'No one did. I can only tell you now because you are a full agent — didn't you hear what was in the pledge?'
'I see,' I said slowly. 'What's UltraWord™ like?'
'As Libris states: "The ultimate reading experience". The first thing that hits you is the music and colour.'
'What about the new plots?'
'I didn't see that,' confessed Miss Havisham as the elevator doors opened. 'We were all given a copy of The Little Prince updated with the new operating system — but Pageglow™, WordBuddy™, PlotPotPlus™ and ReadZip™ are all quite dazzling in their simplicity.'
'That's good.'
'But something just doesn't seem right.'
'That's not so good.'
We walked along the corridor to where the Text Sea opened out in front of us, the roof of the corridor lifting higher and higher until it had no discernible end, just swirling patterns of punctuation forming into angry storm clouds. At the dockside scrawltrawlers rode gently at their moorings while the day's wordcatch was auctioned off at the dockside.
'Like what? A problem with the system?'
'I wish I knew,' said Miss Havisham, 'but try as I might I couldn't make the book do anything it shouldn't. In BOOK V7.2 you could force an uncommanded translation into Esperanto by subjecting the book to a high "G" manoeuvre. In BOOK V6.3 the verb "to eat" conflicted with any description of a pangolin and caused utter mayhem with the tenses. I've tried everything to get UltraWord™ to fail but it's steady as a rock.'
We walked beyond the harbour to where large pipes spewed jumbled letters back into the Text Sea amidst a strong smell of rubber.[22]
'That's where the words end up when you erase them in the Outland,' mentioned Miss Havisham as we strolled past. 'Anything the matter?'
'Junk footnoterphones again,' I muttered, trying to screen the rubbish out. 'A scam of some sort, I think. What makes you believe anything is the trouble with UltraWord™?'
'Perkins called me the night before he died. He said he had a surprising discovery but didn't want to talk over the footnoterphone.'
'Was it about UltraWord™?'
Havisham shrugged.
'To be truthful, I don't know. It's possible — but it could have been about Deane just as easily.'
The road petered out into a beach formed by shards of broken letters. This was where novels met their end. Beneath the leaden skies the books — here taking the appearance of seven-storey buildings — were cast high upon the shore, any plot devices and settings of any use torn out to be sold as salvage. The remaining hulks were then pulled to pieces by Generics working in teams with nothing more high tech than crowbars, cutting torches and chains, stripping the old novel back into words which were tipped into the sea by wheelbarrow gangs, the words dissolving back into letters, their meaning burning off into a slight bluish haze that collected at the foreshore.
We arrived at the copy of The Squire of High Potternews. It looked dark and sombre here on the shore of the Text Sea. If anyone tried to find their copy in the Outland they would have a great deal of trouble; when Text Grand Central withdraw a book, they really mean it.
The book was resting on its end and was slightly open. A large tape had been run round the outside that read: 'Jurisfiction, do not cross'.
'Looking for something?'
It was Harris Tweed and Uriah Hope; they jumped down from the book and looked at us curiously.
'Good evening, Harris,' said Miss Havisham. 'We were trying to find Deane.'
'Me too. Have a look around if you wish but I'm damned if I can find a single clue as to his whereabouts.'
22
'… Dear Friend, I am a fifty-year-old lady from the Republic of Gondal. I got your details from the Council of Genres and decided to contact you to see if you could help. My husband Reginald Jackson was the rebel leader in